OVERSTRAND – The excitement is still lingering, although the Great Southern Bioblitz (GSB} 2024 of 20 – 23 September, as well as the posting and identification, is history. The final figures show that Overstrand is the winner in South Africa with 14 567 observations. Cape Town is second with 13 767.
In the whole of the Southern hemisphere, Overstrand is placed second and Cape Town third. Melbourne took the lead with 20 619 observations. In the number of species-division, Overstrand is fourth with 2039 and Cape Town fifth with 1983 species. As for the number of observers, Cape Town is placed third with 376. Overstrand is not even on the top eight list, so our observers made much more observations per person to rank so high otherwise.
Accolades go to Jenny Parsons, who is ranked third under the five top identifiers in the Southern hemisphere. Out of the 4308 identifiers in the Southern hemisphere, four out of the top five are from South Africa. “Even though I missed the bioblitz for observations, I put time in on identifying. I found this rewarding and learnt a lot and questioned location and endemism, etc. The success of the bioblitz for science is getting the 1000’s of observations to research level. This data then can play a critical role in conservation,” says Jenny.
Overstrand also did brilliantly in the division for top observers: Suzette Vermeulen made 1573 obser-vations, Adele Scheepers 1263, Jan Momsen 1153, Renata Kruyswijk 877, Magriet Brink 765 and Sandy Immelman 540. Suzette also spotted the most species: 552. One can see that our local facilitators, Sandy, Magriet, Adele and Jenny have put their hearts and souls into the effort.
The other local facilitator is Di Marais from Hermanus. “The Hermanus Botanical Society (HBS) are great supporters of the GSB but this year we had our annual flower festival, Celebration of Fynbos over the same time as the GSB. This limited many of our members’ time for bioblitzing. Nevertheless, we encouraged participation on our guided walks to take photographs for GSB. Assistance was offered with submitting photographs to iNaturalist for the GSB 2024, especially amongst young people,” Di says.
Sandy Immelman is very excited about this year’s Bioblitz: “What an amazing effort was put in across the Southern hemisphere for this GSB! It is wonderful to see Bioblitzing gaining traction and inspiring more people to get involved – which can only benefit our planet and all of the life on it.” Sandy also mentions the efforts different clubs has put in to combine their excursions with taking pics for the Bioblitz: The Betty’s Bay Conservation group cleaning Stony Point, all the Eco-groups on their beach clean-up efforts, the hiking clubs and photographic clubs. Then also the Kogelberg Garden Circle who combined the Bioblitz with their Fynbos rescue effort in the new Kleinmond Cemetery.
